Metal Gear Solid Big Boss Story and History Part 1: Snake Eater

A summary of how Naked Snake became Big Boss.

Operation Snake Eater

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Unsurprisingly, Snake was chosen for Operation Snake Eater, and he was tasked to assassinate The Boss. The KGB also provided aid by putting him in contact with ADAM and EVA, two NSA agents who had defected to the Soviet Union. Snake’s first objective would be to head to Rassvet to link up with ADAM.

However, as soon as he lands, he encounters The Boss, who proceeds to swiftly kick his ass with more CQC badassery before warning him that she would kill him if they met again in the future.

“What about you, Jack? What’s it going to be? Loyalty to your country, or loyalty to me? Your country, or your old mentor? The mission, or your beliefs? Your duty to your unit, or your personal feelings? You don’t know the truth yet. But sooner or later, you’ll have to choose.” – The Boss

When Snake finally arrives at Rassvet, he meets up with a woman on a motorcycle instead of ADAM. She is unable to provide the password “La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo” (oh boy), and she only gains Snake’s trust after protecting him from a GRU ambush. The woman reveals herself as EVA and provides him with a scientist disguise and a new handgun to help with his mission. She also tells him to head to Graniny Gorki, where Sokolov was being held.

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Instead of finding Sokolov at Graniny Gorki, Snake encounters Dr. Aleksandr Leonovitch Granin, yet another nuclear scientist who was upset at Volgin’s decision to fund Sokolov’s Shagohod project instead of his own weapon, a bipedal tank which he called ‘Metal Gear’. Metal Gear?!???! Granin then tells Snake that Sokolov was in the Groznyj Grad fortress and also provides him with a keycard to reach the mountains. Before Snake departs, Granin also reveals his intentions to send his blueprints for Metal Gear to a friend in the USA.

Snake eventually manages to infiltrate the weapons wing in Groznyj Grad by taking on the disguise of GRU major Raikov. Snake finds Sokolov, who provides him with more information about how the Shagohod development is going. Long story short, things aren’t good. Before Snake can escape with Sokolov, Volgin enters the room and is able to see through Snake’s disguise fairly quickly by grabbing his balls. By the way, it’s heavily implied that Volgin and Raikov were engaged in a sexual relationship. Scandalous.

Volgin captures him and starts torturing him while repeatedly asking if the CIA knew about the Philosophers’ Legacy. What is this Philosophers’ Legacy, you ask? I’ll get to that really soon. EVA, who is disguised as Tatyana (Volgin’s lover and the Shagohod supervisor), tries to tell Volgin to stop with the torture. However, this makes Ocelot suspect that she’s another spy within their ranks and decides to test her by juggling his three guns, one of which contains a single bullet, and starts firing them at random. Snake interferes by swinging into Ocelot’s way just as he’s about to fire, and he loses his right eye in the process.

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After the entire ordeal, Volgin, Tatyana, Ocelot, and The Boss leave the torture room. Snake soon manages to escape and make his way back to Groznyj Grad, where he plants C3 explosives to destroy the hangar. He encounters Volgin, Ocelot, and The Boss once again, and discovers that they have found out that Tatyana was a spy all along, as they found a microfilm on her, containing the Philosophers’ Legacy. The Philosophers were made up of the most powerful men in America, Russia, and China, and the Legacy was a vast sum of money accumulated by them.


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Author
Zhiqing Wan
Zhiqing is the Reviews Editor for Twinfinite, and a History graduate from Singapore. She's been in the games media industry for nine years, trawling through showfloors, conferences, and spending a ridiculous amount of time making in-depth spreadsheets for min-max-y RPGs. When she's not singing the praises of Amazon's Kindle as the greatest technological invention of the past two decades, you can probably find her in a FromSoft rabbit hole.